Broken Hearts Make Bright Eyes (Cici)

[zakattack]

Sitting in the darkness I couldn’t figure out what I should do. Part of me wanted to run towards Deval and scream and holler and yell till I was blue in the face for hurting me. I would never hurt him, I’d never actually hurt Sampson either, and I thought he knew that…Grinding my hands into my eyes again I couldn’t seem to scrub out the empty darkness and blazing anger that I saw in Deval’s eyes. He hates me.

[/i] The thought of him never speaking to me again, the thought of never feeling his lips on mine, or his hand laced though my fingers anymore was enough to send shivers down my spine.

Groaning again I pushed myself up from the ground and tried to quell the steady stream of tears. I wasn’t going to go to him. He didn’t deserve that. He didn’t deserve me. There was such a conflict of emotion rattling around inside me I couldn’t focus on what I should do or shouldn’t and the steady thrumb of my head and the flow of alcohol in my veins didn’t help. Nothing made sense, not the way he screamed, not the feel of the stalks of corn behind me, nothing. I had offered him myself and in return he tossed me to the ground like trash. Suddenly the thought of the tie tack popped into my head. I’d given away one of my very best shirts to get it for him, it wasn’t like I had money the way he did. Clothes, especially ones that weren’t worn to the point of being shapeless and threadbare, were hard to come by in the Corto house, and now I had one less for a stupid boy who didn’t love me.

Searching the ground I was hoping I could find the tack and trade it back for my shirt, I might have to toss in something else, maybe work a few hours extra for the lady, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t want him to have the satisfaction of having something so special from me anymore. My hands traveled over the course ground as I crawled on my hands and knees hoping to prick my finger on the end of the tie tack just so he wouldn’t have it. “Probably threw it away already.”[/color] I mutter trying to get to my feet, but as I started to stand another body toppled over me. Too thin and light to be Deval I could only except it to be the wild haired girl that couldn’t keep her eyes off the boys at the party.
“God! Stay the hell away...”[/color] I start to yell looking at the girl but it wasn’t who I expected. “Who are you? You’re not from around here...”[/color] I whisper at the jumbled crying mess of a girl who probably didn’t look so different from myself with her puffy red eyes and tear stained cheeks.

[/blockquote][/blockquote][/size][/color][/justify]

[Deleted]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=width,494,true][bg=000000]

May be surrounded by
A million people I
Still feel all alone
I just wanna go home

“Freya, we can’t go… please…?” The words resonate so indistinctly as I rush from the scene, only managing to bring more tears down my fragile cheeks. Is Rum Tum stupid? Does he not get it? Maybe he really doesn’t. Maybe he’s so heavily adapted to loneliness that he’s forgotten what it’s like to have it pulling at your nerves, stealing oxygen from your lungs, and bleeding into your soul when you aren’t quite used to it yet. Perhaps he doesn’t understand that sort of pain – the sort of pain that can only be healed by warm embraces and gentle words. I suppose he’s found a way to be immune to it, seeing as he obviously hasn’t known the feeling of a sincere hug for years. He’s never had a duty before, never owed any responsibility to another human being, at least not since his mother. He wouldn’t know.

Thus, I have no reason to expect him to have any empathy for me right now as I run from the menacing stares, the bitter words, and the girl who threw a punch at my face. He hadn’t defended me: not with his fist, not with his words, not with his eyes, even after I had valiantly tossed myself in to protect him from these maniacs. Now he’s probably hugging that stupid kid and smiling and there’s nothing I can do, nothing I can blame him for, nothing I can call him but ignorant, unaware, oblivious – so so oblivious.

I stumble through the corn, my mind in complete turmoil. I don’t know where my feet are headed: any place but here. Home, maybe. Home would be nice. I used to hate home, hence why I left: ignorant heads, discerning stares, people walking around acting like they understood feelings like love and pain without looking at what was two feet in front of them. But I guess it’s no different out here. At least at home I had a pillow that never ceased to catch my tears, (but also filled my nightmares with haunting images of Kormiko).

I didn’t belong there and I don’t belong here either, so I suppose I’ll just keep running. I’ll keep running until the pain stops. Of course, the pain never does because the next moment and I’m tripping over something, tumbling to the ground. Or rather, somebody… “God! Stay the hell away...” Oh good. Someone else here to kill my self-esteem. I struggle to push myself off of the girl I’d just fallen onto, turning over so that I’m sitting only a few inches away. “Who are you? You’re not from around here...”

“And thank God I’m not! I thought I was from Idiotville and then this place happened!” I shout without caution. I examine the girl with her disheveled appearance and her tear-stained face. I’m pretty sure this is a fairly accurate depiction of what I’d be seeing if I looked in a mirror right now, except for the clothes of course. At least hers make sense. To imagine just how out of place I must look in my ratty Capitol outfit, oh my.

“Well, you don’t look like you’re doing too great yourself,” I say, wiping the remaining tears from my eyes while wondering why she looks familiar. Then it clicks. She must have been the girl I saw leaving the party with the scowl-faced boy. “Oh.” I say, analyzing my own realization. “Did that boy leave you out here? Man, boys really suck. Sorry.” Most of the sadness has drained from my system, leaving me with this gaping hole in my stomach. Which is worse? “And also sorry for tripping over you, because yeah that wasn’t cool.”

I still haven’t answered the girl’s first question. “Anyways, I’m Freya and you should probably know that the reason your boyfriend hasn’t come back yet is because he’s apparently too busy getting all buddy-buddy with my friend right now, who so happens to be his long lost half-brother, but I wasn’t really interested in staying for the dramatic reunion…” I sigh and realize just how many words I’ve said in the past minute. This is what happens every time, every time I’m lonely. I talk, even if I don’t know who I’m talking to. Heck, I’ve been talking to videotapes for the past month. I put my frustrated face in my hands, peeking between my fingers only when I want to get another glance of the girl’s face.

“God, I think I just dealt with enough crazies to last me a century. Please tell me you’re not one them.”

[/blockquote][/justify][/size][/td][/tr][/td][/tr][/table]

[zakattack]

Before I could continue the girl started rambling her voice accented and hurried and I couldn’t figure out just what she was talking about. Her clothes were strange, nothing like you’d see here in District 11 and I felt myself staring with my mouth agape. She was crazy, she was clearly not from here…through the rattiness of her clothes I could make out the fact they were once beautiful and full of color and life. They weren’t the cheap stuff we got here with rough spun cotton and earthy tones. And her tears didn’t help

[/i] a large welt had started to form under her eye and the sadness she raditated could only be matched by me. She was weak. We were weak.

I tried to gather my thoughts and make out what she was saying but the accent was so off I was having a hard time figuring out, Then it hit me.[/i] My eyes went wide and I felt myself taking a step back. “You’re from the Capitol.”[/color] I whisper almost in shock. What was she doing here? Why did she look like she did? Did they come back for more? Were Xavier and the other girl not enough this year? My head was swirling in a drunken haze and I couldn’t make myself run but I felt my body start to shake. “Don’t hurt me.”[/color] I didn’t know what she meant when she kept prattling on about my boyfriend and brothers and anything. All I knew was someone from the Capitol was staring me down and she could take away what little I had in a heart beat.

“I didn’t mean to get drunk, please don’t tell a peacekeeper. I swear I’ll do anything just don’t get Deval in trouble, you can blame me if you have to have someone to fall on but don’t get the others in trouble.”[/color] I stare at her pleading that she doesn’t alert the authorities that must have brought her here. Even though I hate everyone, I’m not letting them get punished . Looking around I grab an ear of corn an offer it to the girl as if I’m trying to bribe her pitifully. “I don’t have anything to give you but here’s this. Its food and its real tasty you don’t even have to cook it. Just please don’t rat us out, we just wanted to have a little bit of fun after all the Izars have been through…”[/color]

The tears start to well up in my eyes as I picture the Peace Keepers dragging Deval and Sampson and Emery away. They’re too important to hurt. [/i] My eyes search the girl pleading with her and a pit forms in my stomach, Deval would probably just let this strange girl have me.[/i] Then the tears fall and I’m not sure if its from fear or booze or the fact I just lost the only one important to me. Either way this strange girl would never understand. In the Capitol it rains glitter and diamonds and no one ever frowns. So why, Freya was it?, was crying didn’t make sense to me. How could someone who had everything end up here and in tears?
[/blockquote][/blockquote][/size][/color][/justify]

[Deleted]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=width,500,true][bg=000000]

I know that I'm not perfect
And that I don't claim to be.
So before you point your fingers,
Be sure your hands are clean.

“You’re from the Capitol,” the girl says, her eyes widening. I stand up from the ground, trying to brush the dirt from my already dirtied clothes. “Yeah, so?” I retort. This is the last thing I need right now: more judgment. “Don’t hurt me,” she pleads and I roll my eyes, trying to hide the sorrow that plagues me.

“Oh come on now. Do I look like I’m going to hurt you?” I ask, folding my arms, but she keeps going. “I didn’t mean to get drunk, please don’t tell a peacekeeper. I swear I’ll do anything just don’t get Deval in trouble, you can blame me if you have to have someone to fall on but don’t get the others in trouble.”

Her words are knives, sharper than that boy – Deval’s – words, sharper than the feeling of the girl’s fist in my face, sharper than even the voice of the young boy. I thought the pain from minutes prior was subsiding, but her desperate pleas, full of judgment, take my fragile heart by surprise. To her, I’m just a monster, back home I’m a humiliation, and to everyone else – to the Izars, to Kormiko, to Rum Tum – I’m an annoyance. I just want someone to know me. I wish it were that easy. Why is it so hard to be an open book? Why is it so hard to find something to love – something that can love you back? Maybe it’s because the whole world is ignorant. Ignorant, ignorant, ignorant. And what is there to love about ignorance?

“God, where do you people pick this crap up? You think that because I’m from the Capitol I’ve supposedly got an entire peacekeeper squad backing me up!? Uh, I’d be surprised if my drunk next-door neighbor even knew what a peacekeeper was. Most kids I know run around the Capitol and get wasted every night, so really, I don’t think I’m the one to stop you and those...freaks...from having some stupid corn field celebration,” I speak fervently. The rules are different out here, though. This isn’t the Capitol; this is District Eleven.

However, her words plant an idea in my head, as I’m reminded of how much power I actually have. How easy would it be to throw all of this frustration back in Rum Tum’s face? I could simply walk up to a peacekeeper and tell him I’d been kidnapped by this strange wanderer and so effortlessly they would accept it once they realized I was that missing Capitolite named Freya Hanig whose father was a high-ranked muttation engineer. And I wouldn’t have to deal with all of the feelings, all of this longing, this jealousy. I’d get to go home. Home. Doesn’t home sound nice right now?

But no, I wouldn’t do that…

Would I?

Maybe this girl does have a decent reason to be afraid.

Suddenly, she’s handing me corn and saying it’s the only thing she can give me. “Wait a second…you can just eat this corn stuff?” My eyes light up with wonder. “Just like…like that?” I peel down the leafy stuff and put my mouth to the cob and take a bite. “Oh my god, this is so much better than the stupid plants we’ve been eating.” It’s then that I notice that she’s been crying. Is she really afraid…of me? Or heartbroken? Or both? Or maybe she’s pulled herself into that pit of emotions that we all fall through time to time – the one I’ve been trying to find my way out of for far too long. There’s a mystery beneath those sunken eyes and that worn face; there’s a somebody that wants to be understood.

I take a few careful steps closer to her and try to manage an empathetic sort of smile, putting the corn inside my satchel to save for later. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you or anybody.” I look down at my feet and put my hands in my pockets. “I know what it’s like to lose people you love, and I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone. Not in a million years.” I think about Kormiko and quickly push that memory down. “Although, I suppose I did hurt a peacekeeper getting in here...” I pull the peacekeeper’s wallet from my satchel and toss it to the girl, grinning proudly in light of my accomplishments. “Keep it. Probably got a fortune in there.” If I had more to give her, I would. “You convinced yet?” I ask lightheartedly, and for a second, I push down the tears and the pain because it's been months since I've talked to anyone besides Rum Tum or my video camera, and I don't want to screw this up.

[/blockquote][/justify][/size][/td][/tr][/td][/tr][/table]

[zakattack]

The girl, Freya, acts like I’m the crazy one as I stand gaping before her. I just don’t know what to expect from someone from there.

[/i] All our schooling is how we should love the Capitol and all they do for us. How they keep us safe and fed and how they love us so much, but every year we watch as they steal away our sons and daughters for their own sick enjoyment. Does Freya think we don’t see the way they cheer and bet on “favorites” and how little our own people actually mean to them. Why would she be any different to me. The Capitol stole Deval’s Benat and now she’s going to steal me too. I could feel the trembling of my knees and hands as she rambles on and on, Do they all talk this much? [/i], like I don’t understand just how things are in real life.

Soon though she takes the corn and her face lights up as she bites into it and for a flash of a moment Freya looks like she’s just one of us. Starving and ragged and just looking for the next bout of food to keep going. Freya is broken just like us. She is no different than me or Deval or Sampson. She’s a lost child just searching to find something that makes sense. “I…its just…”[/color] I look at her and take a step forward she’s stumbling over her words and I can’t really understand how someone who had everything seems just as weak as me.

“Why are you here?”[/color] The words are soft, not soft in the way I speak to Deval, but soft from fear and confusion. Nothing about the night is making sense, my hands scrub at my cheeks as I look back to the ground ashamed of what I thought was a fancy outfit. She probably had closets full of frills and fluff where one garment was more than my whole family made in a year. She was everything beautiful and priceless while I was dirt…yet here she was in front of me covered in grime and practically starving. The world wasn’t making sense and I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her, cautiously as she tucked the corn away I started again, “I’m so confused. You have everything in the Capitol…money, safety, happiness…why wouldn’t you still be there…”[/color] The booze and emotions are swirling around me and I rub my eyes trying to clear it up when suddenly I’m thumped by a flying something. Keep it. Probably got a fortune in there .

Reaching down I pick up a wallet and open it. There is more money in it than I’ve seen in my life. There is enough that I could buy food for the whole family this winter, I could buy a coat, new shoes, things that would actually matter for my life. I could have something real. “You don’t need this? I can’t…I just…Thank you.”[/color]


Why is she helping me... [/i]

Sinking down to the ground I look up, “So what happened back there. I don’t really want to go back and deal with…him.”[/color] My hand waves gesturing toward the way Deval ran. It was complicated explaining what was happening with me and Deval but yet he was all I could think about. I just hoped he was okay.

[/blockquote][/blockquote][/size][/color][/justify]

[Deleted]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=width,500,true][bg=000000]

I know that I'm not perfect
And that I don't claim to be.
So before you point your fingers,
Be sure your hands are clean.

“Why are you here?” Good question. Why am I here? Why did I dare leave the comfort of my own home? “I’m so confused. You have everything in the Capitol…money, safety, happiness…why wouldn’t you still be there…” Her questions find their way into my head, poking at the memories and turning the atmosphere a few degrees colder. Home: what a comforting thought.

But then I remember the lies that filled my head, the lies that walked the streets and planted themselves in the hearts and souls of every citizen until everything else was just a blur of thoughts pushed to the corners of one’s consciousness and locked away for the world to never discover.

I didn’t want to be a walking, talking lie.

And I don’t plan to start now. Hence, in a moment, words are pouring from my mouth in a wild sea. Why can’t I just speak? I just want somebody to know me and similarly, I just want to know somebody! Is it all that hard? After walking through the depths of loneliness, I just want somebody to know me and hear me – somebody who won’t take my words and toss them away for someone else’s promises, (someone like Rum Tum).

“So what if I had everything? You think all that stuff is free? You think money just grows on trees? No, it grows on lies. Lies, lies, lies. Every day, just tossing handfuls of lies into the ground beneath our little feet, so they can all grow up and be little flowers soaking in the little rays of sunshine and putting little smiles on everybody’s little, meaningless faces and my goodness, if you think that money and safety and happiness are worth more than the honest to god truth, take a vacation to the Capitol. You’d love it. Really.” I’m so out of breath at this point, I almost don’t notice that the girl has picked up the wallet.

“You don’t need this? I can’t…I just…Thank you.”

Then she asks what was going on back there, saying she doesn't want to go back and deal with it.

“I don’t know, people just being stupid.” I think about who I would be if I’d lived here my entire life. Would I be like the girl before me? I don’t know, but if one thing’s for sure, I don’t want to be anybody else. And maybe Rum Tum wants me to be somebody else…maybe he loves his new brothers more than he could ever care for me, but I guess we’re just more different than I knew, and that’s something I can’t change. "I don't really want to go back and deal with it either."

I look at the girl, who’s now sitting on the ground. “You know what? Let's run away. Let’s get out of here, away from those idiots. I obviously don’t belong here, and the Capitol really isn’t much of my taste either, but it’s beautiful out there. Nobody to tell you what to do or who to be or what’s wrong and what’s right.”

“I mean, you don’t look like you have much of a reason to stay here.” Her clothes are tattered, her heart seems to be torn; I wonder if she has a family that cares about her. From the way she seems to hold herself up like an independent, like she’s been watching out for herself for years now, it doesn’t seem so likely. The only thing I can do now is wait for her response.

[/blockquote][/justify][/size][/td][/tr][/td][/tr][/table]